


After Feedback

by FlockOfPigeons



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:00:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26400802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlockOfPigeons/pseuds/FlockOfPigeons
Summary: Richmond is gone, and we are not okay
Kudos: 8
Collections: Canada Moist Talkers Fanfiction





	1. Leviathan

The air smelled like lightning. 

Lightning and something else. 

It was like the smell of an old TV, the smell of circuitry and dust and that something burning that your parents always told you not to worry about but you always did. 

The stadium still reeked of it as Hobbs sat in the grass, the game well and truly over, pulling up fistfuls of dandelions and idly twisting them into an admittedly rather pathetic looking crown. Ziwa had shown him how to do it after Harrison had presented her with a fistful of flowers pulled from the earth of a rival stadium. Laughter had rung out in sonorous peals as he had failed to show the dexterity required for such a task. Hobbs had volunteered to learn in his stead, but hadn’t shown much talent for it. 

Nevertheless, it stuck with him. 

He bit his lip, sharp teeth threatening to puncture the skin. He would not cry. He couldn’t. He was so focused on this show of resilience for an audience of no one that the gurgle above him startled him, his fists tightening and crushing the fragile stems and petals held within. 

“Rich?” He asked quietly, feeling the temperature drop as a shadow passed over him. He looked up, up, and saw a familiar face. Just not the one he had hoped for. 

The beast above him was massive, even more so when up this close. The Leviathan had never been this close before. It gurgled again, that damp rumbling deep in its throat, exhaling a humid breath that blew Hobbs’ fur back. It turned its giant head, meeting Hobbs’ eyes with one glassy black orb. In that moment, Hobbs felt something. Something bizarre, some thread that tied the two together and carried a sense of loss proportionate in scale to the creature before him. Loss, anger, a knowledge of the need for acceptance and yet refusal of the same. The knowledge that he had had to leave, but a selfish undertow therein that dragged that knowledge down, down, down. 

They wanted him back. Both of them as one. And failing that, they wanted revenge. 

Hobbs reached out a hand, laid it upon the great slick forehead of the beast. For a moment, the world went still. 

Then motion, the Leviathan arcing up into the sky, a moment of panic as Hobbs thought that she, too, would leave him behind. Then she twisted, plunged toward the ground, teeth and claws flashing into view - they hadn’t been there before, he had never seen them before, were they always there before? - tearing through the dirt and grass in a motion conveying pure and primal rage, grief that both encompassed and extended beyond Hobbs’ own ringing out in a screech that seemed to rend the very air. 

She plunged down, down, out of sight. Hobbs crept forward, peered down into the dark maw that had opened in the ground. Slowly, the head rose back up, eyes meeting once again. The beast rested her head upon the dirt with a thud, and Hobbs realized in that moment that she had a plan. He was part of it. Had been since he had first touched a bat. He clambered atop her thick skull, and again she moved, nearly throwing him off but some unknown force kept him steady. 

Down, down, down they went, and Hobbs watched as roots and soil closed above them. 

All was dark. 

They landed in the Underarena, slick with algae and damp, and Hobbs slid down onto the ground. The Leviathan gurgled deeply, and moved forward. 

They walked together for a long time, Hobbs with a hand on the great flank beside him, her body winding back through the tunnels into corridors unseen. 

Finally, they arrived. 

Once again; the air took on a strange scent. Death, decay, smoke. Hobbs shivered, and shivered once again and more strongly when he saw what he had been lead to. 

A book. A book on a pedestal, glowing softly blue. He knew he shouldn’t. Knew what he was about to do was blasphemous. He cast one more look at the looming, coal-eyed face beside him. 

A warble, all too familiar. 

He stepped forward, and reached for the book. 

  
  



	2. The Smell of Static, Encore

He smelled it again

Lightning fast, running, running, his heart halfway left behind and halfway already stolen from him. 

Feet on the grass, stumbling, grass stains on the blue fabric worn thin across the knees, back up again. More important, this, than any dash for home. Hand outstretched, grasping for the great between. 

A bellow above. Sorrow, loss, acceptance. 

Encore! Encore!

“I’ll be back,” words not spoken, simply sent. He knew that they were understood. 

“We’ll be back.

I just gotta find out how.

She’ll know, won’t she?”

The smell of static. 

The air tearing at his throat like something alive, angry, heartbeat replaced by thundering blasphemy. Where had all that faith gone?

To hell, in many senses of the term. 

Eyes met eyes again, those of a stranger. Confusion, listlessness. Hobbs smiled weakly. 

“You’ll be okay,” he said. “They’ll take care of you.

Like they always took care of me.”

A hand clapped on a shoulder, a show of strength he both felt and didn’t feel, such an odd tumbling of emotion he didn’t know whether it was sincere or a necessary facade. 

He would be okay. 

A bridge across the divide. 

New familiar faces. 

Green jersey, never blue. 

And there she was. 

“Tell me how to get him home,” he said. 

“Tell us how to get home.”


End file.
